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Schwarz on Workbenches

From 500 Year Old Shaving Horses to the latest modern bulletproof vises being made today, Popular Woodworking Magazine’s contributing editor Christopher Schwarz writes frequently on designing, building, and using workbenches on his woodworking blog, the Chris Schwarz Blog. Whether you’re looking for the best workbench design, workbench plans, a solid history of how benches have evolved, or want to soup up your existing workbench with smart jigs and holding devices, you’ll find it here. http://www.popularwoodworking.com/workbenches/schwarz-workbenches/new-bulletproof-vises-from-lie-nielsen

Getting a good workbench usually takes loads of money, time or both of those things. But what if you tried to be really clever and you used inexpensive construction and home renovation materials to build a massive traditional bench for a fraction of the cost of a commercial bench and with only two days...

Roman workbenches have not left this world. In fact, some people might argue that they are still used today and are called shaving horses. While I don’t have a dog in that particular fight, I do have some evidence to present on how they were used up through the 20th century in their original...

The first time I saw an 18th-century workbench, I thought: Wow. That will never work. But then I built some of these benches (dozens, actually), and I am a huge fan of the form’s stability, simplicity and purity. So the first time I saw a Roman workbench from 50 A.D., I thought: Hmmm. That...

The Milkman’s Workbench – a portable bench I built for the June 2013 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine – is about 653 percent better than my first workbench. Thanks to the clever engineering in the portable bench, it can handle most handwork tasks when clamped to a dining room table or kitchen countertop. My...

The portable “Milkman’s Workbench” from the June 2013 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine has attracted a lot of attention, judging from the e-mail piling up in my Inbox. The No. 1 question: How can I build the bench without wooden bench screws? One answer: wedges. Reader Ilkka Sivonen of FInland built the bench without...

I’ve collected tons of drawings of old workbenches, during the years, and most fall into two categories: 1. A typical workbench with typical vises that looks like lots of other workbenches. 2. Workbenches that were drawn by an artist that have vises that would never work and that are put in stupid places where...

If there is one disadvantage to round bench dogs, it is that they can occasionally rotate as you are clamping something between two dogs or when you are planing against a single dog. It’s a minor annoyance, but it’s real. An Italian reader devised a very clever solution to this problem that is quick....

As my dad is a Vietnam vet, I’ve always had a soft spot for the men and women in the armed forces. So when I heard from several of them that they were interested in buying one of my portable workbenches, I thought I could do better than sell them something. I enlisted the...

Holy cow I mucked around a lot making the dogs for the portable workbench featured in the June 2013 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine. I made spring-loaded bench dogs (more complex than necessary). Dogs using a bullet catch (the right-size hardware wasn’t readily available at the home center). And when I considered casting the...